


wishful thinking

by arabybizarre



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Uber Driver Nicole, because of Kat's podcast interview
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 17:50:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11340381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabybizarre/pseuds/arabybizarre
Summary: Uber Driver AU, requested by jaybear1701.Nicole picks up Waverly after a disaster of a date. Naturally, things start to turn around pretty quickly.





	wishful thinking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaybear1701](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaybear1701/gifts).



> Jay wanted the Uber driver AU, and I just couldn't say no. I had the same thought anyway, after listening to that podcast.

Nicole had never been the type to be made uncomfortable by a lapse in conversation. But there seemed to be something about the girl currently sitting in her backseat that had her itching to open up and start babbling.

_It’s just the hour,_ she told herself, glancing compulsively at the time displayed on her radio. Already well past eleven with at least another hour before she could collapse face-first into her bed.

She should’ve called it a night after the last ride. She had an alarm set for 5:30, after all. But there was still that pesky stack of bills currently sitting on her kitchen table, only a few of which she even had the cash to pay for.

Oh, well. It wasn’t like she was unused to this kind of exhaustion. She was nearing the end of her time at the police academy and hadn’t seen a good night’s rest in months. At this point, she kind of doubted she would sleep easily ever again.

“Do you want music?” she called back to the woman. She didn’t particularly look like she was in the mood for talking. But Nicole at least needed a bit of background noise to keep herself awake.

The woman--Waverly, she’d said her name was--seemed to startle slightly at the question. “What’s that?”

“Music?” Nicole lifted up her battered iPod in explanation.

“Oh, yeah. Sure.”

“Well, uh,” Nicole could see the woman staring at her expectantly in the rearview mirror, “do you have a preference?”

“No,” Waverly shook her head, then seemed to think better of it. “Something light, maybe.”

“Got it.” Downtempo Nicole could handle. She pressed play on one of her favorite late night playlists and settled back as a soft and familiar melody filled the car.

She coasted down the highway for several minutes, the silence calm and comfortable between them. Though as rude as she might have felt, she couldn’t help but sneak a few (or more) glances in the rearview.

The woman really was beautiful, vaguely solemn as she might seem. Nicole didn’t like to stare, but as the girl gazed out the window, chin propped on her hand and jawline illuminated by the light of streetlamps and passing cars, she really was… a vision.

Or, at least distracting enough that Nicole (embarrassingly) had to hit the brakes at the last minute as she noticed the sudden, dooming bottleneck of bright red brake lights up ahead.

“Shit,” she muttered, as the car came to a stop. A _dead_ stop.

“No kidding,” Waverly agreed, leaning forward slightly to peek at the sea of tail-lights up ahead. “Some sort of accident?”

“I’ll check.” Sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic was the last thing Nicole wanted to be doing right now. But lo and behold, the Uber gods seemed to be working against her tonight. According to her traffic app, the gridlock went on for nearly a mile and a half. “Damnit,” she groaned, slumping forward against the wheel for a moment before remembering her sense of _professionalism_.

“Yeah, so,” she held up her phone for Waverly to see, “looks like we’re going to be stuck here for a while.”

Waverly chuckled tiredly. “Of course we are. What a shit night…” Then, realizing how she’d sounded. “I mean, no offense. Sorry.”

“None taken.” Nicole glanced ahead. She’d been willing to allow the woman her quiet rumination before, but this sudden, mind-numbing turn of events seemed to have weakened her sense of reservation. “Rough night?”

Waverly scoffed, more towards herself than Nicole. It was answer enough, but emboldened (and maybe a little bit tipsy, the driver suspected), she simply stated, “Dating is overrated.”

Nicole smirked in amusement. “Is it? I mean—well, I guess that does sound pretty jaded, doesn’t it? Relationships are all well and good, don’t get me wrong. You know, once they settle down. But dating?”

“Well, you’ve got a point.” Not that Nicole could really comment. Between working her way through school and now the beast that was the police academy, dating wasn’t very high on her list of priorities. Not that she wouldn’t mind having someone to care for, or spend her time with. But it was the act of getting there that seemed to exhaust her before she ever got started.

“People only want to meet over an app, anymore. And when you do, it’s all like,” she put on what Nicole suspected was her best impression of some oafish twenty-something dudebro, “ _so, are we gonna bang or what?_ ”

At that, Nicole couldn’t contain her smirk. She couldn’t _really_ relate, she supposed.

“Is that where you’ve been looking? Tinder?”

“Not intentionally,” Waverly defended, leaning forward fully now. She peeked between the front seats, seeming to have little care for personal space. _Definitely tipsy,_ Nicole thought. “But it seems it’s either parties or the internet. I’ve tried the library. I thought it might attract a more intellectually suitable candidate.”

“And?”

“I met a very nice elderly woman. We did have coffee together, but we mostly just talked about books.”

Nicole laughed, turning slightly to face Waverly. If they were going to be stuck, she might as well enjoy herself. “A bookworm then. She _does_ sound ‘intellectually suitable’ at least.”

“Kind of out of my age range.”

Nicole was only being half sarcastic when she commented, “Well, maybe your expectations are too... specific.”

“I _should_ have high expectations--”

“I said _specific_ expectations. Like, maybe you’re just waiting around for the wrong _type.”_

Waverly paused. “There could be something to that. After the date I just had, I’m starting to think I was expecting entirely too little.”

Somewhere ahead of them, passengers had started exiting their cars to smoke and gawp ahead at the distant police lights. One group was even tossing around a football.

“And what was so bad about it?”

“Everything?” Waverly seemed mildly bewildered as she recounted the events, as if even she couldn’t comprehend the audacity of it all. “He took me to Taco Bell, first.”

Nicole couldn’t contain her laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I wish I was. This moron--and I guess I should’ve known, with a name like _Champ_ \--actually tried to wine and dine me with chalupas and Baja Blast Mountain Dew.”

“Astounding.”

“The dive bar he took me to to meet his friends afterwards was actually an improvement. Including the fact that he ran out of cash after the first round.”

“How did you even make it to the bar? I would’ve been running for the hills before we even ordered.”

“He was cute?”

“But was he Taco-Bell-justifying cute?” _No_ , Nicole would wager. But then again, the way Waverly seemed to bury her face in her hands, laughing in embarrassment, most certainly _was._ Enough so that Nicole felt a blush rising in her own cheeks.

“Nobody is _that_ cute.”

“Nobody?” Nicole asked, feeling a little bit bold herself. It was too late in the night to feel anything but.

Waverly peeked up through her fingers, biting her lip in thought. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say that.”

That reaction was enough to give the driver pause. She’d given a lot of rides to _a lot_ of different people. And she’d struck up more than a few scintillating conversations. She might have even earned a phone number or two. But she felt fairly confident that no one had looked better in her rearview yet.

It was perhaps for this reason that she said (against all her better judgment--she was working, after all--and practically trapped in this car), “You know, if _I_ got a girl as pretty as you to let me take her on a date, I’d never be caught dead in a Taco Bell.”

There was a moment where Waverly seemed to take pause, the words sinking in. Nicole almost thought she’d made things colossally awkward before the other woman smirked impishly and asked, “Is that so?”

“Oh, no way.” She paused then, grinning with dimples on full display. “You’re definitely worthy of an Applebee’s happy hour.”

Waverly swatted her, mock-indignant with a grin breaking through. “Gee. Thanks.”

“What? They’ve got two-for-one apps!”

“Very classy.”

Nicole chuckled. She couldn’t help but notice that Waverly seemed to have leaned a little farther over her center armrest. “Maybe I’m a little rusty. It’s been awhile since I took anybody out on a date.”

Waverly raised an eyebrow. “I find that a little hard to believe.”

Nicole couldn’t help but feel a little self-satisfied by that reaction. But she could only shrug. “Haven’t really had time for it lately, I guess.”

“I had no idea a career in Uber driving could be such a time-suck.”

“I’m only moonlighting,” Nicole laughed. “I actually graduate from the police academy next month. Which, believe it or not--very time consuming.”

“Really?” Waverly perked up a little bit. “That’s… not what I would have guessed. I mean, not that you don’t have the look or anything,” Waverly quickly corrected. “You do. You look very…”

“Go on.” Nicole was nothing if not a little amused by it all.

Waverly seemed to trail off. “I can picture it,” she explained. “You, in a uniform. It would look very…” Their eyes met, and Nicole found that her mouth was suddenly very, very dry.

The charge of the moment was disrupted by a horn blowing behind them. Nicole whipped around to discover that traffic had begun moving again, if only at a leisurely pace. Admittedly, she was just a little disappointed.

With some delay, Waverly sunk back into her seat. Nicole chanced a look at her through the rearview a couple minutes later, only to find that she was looking right back.

Whatever had sparked between them in the moments earlier seemed to calmly smolder with the movement of the car. They talked idly about music and their mutual studies, about Nicole’s plans for after the academy. The remainder of the drive passed far quicker than either would have liked to admit.

As Nicole pulled up outside of Waverly’s house, silence descended between them again. There was something more that she wanted to say, but she couldn’t tell what was appropriate.

Waverly fidgeted with her hand on the door handle, seeming to face the same dilemma. “Okay, well. Thank you, for the ride. And the conversation.”

“Better than Taco Bell?” Nicole asked, turning in her seat. Waverly smirked, a little flush in the cheeks.

“Much. Applebee’s, on the other hand…”

“Well, if you ever need a ride. I’d be more than happy.”

Waverly paused for a second before pulling a tissue out of her purse and hastily scribbling on it. As she handed it to Nicole she said, “Maybe next time you can show me where you actually take the pretty girls.” Like that, she was hopping out of the car, perhaps flustered by her own bravery.

Nicole glanced down at the phone number written on the tissue. Then, a little flustered herself, looked up to the house’s porch, where Waverly was glancing back over her shoulder with a small smile.


End file.
